


Chiralities: S-Side

by Counterpunch, redonthefly, RowanWould, theseerasures, ultranos, whisperwhisk



Category: Captain America (Movies), Frozen (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/F, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-01-23 23:07:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 16,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1582751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Counterpunch/pseuds/Counterpunch, https://archiveofourown.org/users/redonthefly/pseuds/redonthefly, https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowanWould/pseuds/RowanWould, https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseerasures/pseuds/theseerasures, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultranos/pseuds/ultranos, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whisperwhisk/pseuds/whisperwhisk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"Where are we going?"</em>
</p>
<p>  <em>"The future." </em></p>
<p>Disney/Captain America fusion--a series of connected stories, following Anna Rogers as she enlists, becomes Captain America, and shapes a world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Girl in the War

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Chiralities: R-Side](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1582190) by [Counterpunch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Counterpunch/pseuds/Counterpunch), [redonthefly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redonthefly/pseuds/redonthefly), [RowanWould](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowanWould/pseuds/RowanWould), [theseerasures](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseerasures/pseuds/theseerasures), [ultranos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultranos/pseuds/ultranos), [whisperwhisk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whisperwhisk/pseuds/whisperwhisk). 



> by ultranos.

Anna crumples the latest failed enlistment form in her fist and stuffs it the pocket of her jacket. The repeated rejections never fail to sting. Despite the accident she had when she was younger, the details of which she can’t actually remember, having left her frail and short and a whole list of health problems, it had done nothing to end the energy that thrums through her. She’s never been good at sitting still, especially when there’s something good to fight for.

She finds herself in a movie theater, because she has nothing better to do, and maybe watching some of the films will let her forget the bitter disappointment of another “4F” stamped on her dreams. But there’s a short encouraging people to do their part for the war effort, and it burns through her. So when some asshole start whining about not seeing the cartoons instead, she really can’t help herself.

"Hey! Why don’t you shut up and have some respect?"

Which, okay, in retrospect? Possibly not the brightest idea, because the guy is at least twice her size. And his punches kind of hurt, especially when they’re aimed at her face and send her sprawling into the trash in the alley behind the theater.

Her hands grasp at the first thing she can reach, which happens to be a trash can lid. Anna brings it up to bear against the guy’s next swing, but he nearly rips her arms out of her sockets as he grabs it and slams her into the alley brick. The taste of hot iron burns in the back of her throat. She spits out the thick wad of blood and brings her fists up once again.

"You just don’t know when to quit, do you?"

Anna shakes herself, jumping from foot-to-foot to hide the fact that she’s swaying from the hits. “I could do this all day.”

His next punch sends her sprawling again. It’s moments like this, when she’s eating pavement, that she almost hates that accident she can’t remember, but can’t ever forget for all the marks it left on her.

"Hey! Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?" A very familiar voice breaks through her momentary recriminations. She’s pushing herself off the ground as she hears the sound of flesh hitting flesh, followed by the crackle of ice.

"Sometimes, I think you  _like_  getting into impossible situations.”

Anna hears the crinkle of paper, and she winces as she realizes that the enlistment form must have fallen out of her pocket.

"So you’re from Jersey now? Oh Anna," her sister sighs. "You know you can’t lie on these things. And the second they realize we’re related, they’ll know."

It’s Elsa’s quiet voice, full of sympathy, that makes Anna look up. And, just for a moment, Anna can’t keep her face from falling. Elsa’s in full Army uniform, hair pulled back in a tightly-braided bun. It’s everything  _Anna’s_  ever wanted, but she’s just the useless one.  _Elsa’s_  the eldest, the gifted one with all the expectations on her, and she’s always been the one to protect Anna, to be right there to catch her when she falls. And so Anna know’s there’s only one reason Elsa would be wearing that uniform.

"Got your orders, huh Sergent?"

Elsa’s smile is soft and a little broken. “107th. Ship out first thing tomorrow.”

 _It’s not fair,_  she thinks, wildly, desperately. She just got Elsa back, after years of awkward distance and endless silence. It’s hard to be isolated and secretive in a cramped apartment in Brooklyn, but somehow their family had managed it. But after their parents had died, something had to give, and Anna and Elsa had finally gained back what they’d lost. And now, Elsa is going where Anna can’t follow.

"Hey…hey. Anna, I’m sorry." Elsa looks so upset and Anna realizes that she must be showing her thoughts on her face. She feels immediately guilty, because this isn’t Elsa’s fault, and right now, every second with her sister is precious. She’s not about to let Elsa go overseas, go into a  _warzone_  thinking she left Anna sad and depressed.

So Anna takes the failed form out of Elsa’s hands, crumples it up, and throws it into one of the trash cans that’s still upright. She threads one of her arms through Elsa’s and beams up at her sister as she drags them both out of the alley. “Well, if it’s your last night here, we have to do something fun.”

"Oh? Like what?" Elsa raises an eyebrow, obviously amused. Anna looks around a little, and then crows in victory as she dives for a newspaper on the ground, only Elsa’s strength keeping her from falling over.

She holds up the paper, open to a story on the World Expo. “We’re going to see the future!”


	2. I won't let you down, done letting you down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by ultranos

So, there was Basic. And the mud and the guys twice her size pushing her around, she could totally do without. But Dr. Erskine gave her a chance, and there's no _way_ Anna's going to blow it. She was born for this sort of thing, she knows it. It's just...taken her a bit longer to get here. And hey, Elsa made it through this, so obviously she could to.

And she did. Somehow, out of everyone in the program, they picked her. For the first time, Anna isn't second-best, the consolation prize. 

It's strange, being in the car with Agent Carter. She feels so small next to the other woman, like she's still a child. Because Agent Carter is what she's always wanted to be. She's calm, sophisticated, pretty, and clearly able to hold her own. 

Desperate for something to talk about, she looks out the window for inspiration. "Hey, I know this part of town!"

"Oh?"

"Yeah," she says, nodding to herself. "I was..." She swallows hard. "I was beat up in that alley. And behind that restaurant. And..." She glances back at Agent Carter, and the other woman's eyes are flashing with...something. It reminds her of Elsa, and her throat feels suddenly too tight. "What?"

"Why were you...beat up?"

Anna squirms in her seat. "It's sorta stupid."

"Tell me anyway."

"It's, well, I get into fights. A lot. People are always looking down on me, not giving me a chance, because I'm so small. Not worth it. And they do it to other people too, and...and I just can't take it." She looks out the window, briefly, sees kids playing in the street. A little girl has a little boy in a headlock, but both of them are laughing. It's okay, it's not a memory. She turns back to look at the other woman. "I don't like bullies, ma'am. I know I'm not much, especially not compared to someone like you. You're impressive and you make people listen to you and you're not bothered by your appearance, not that I think you're not pretty, but, that it doesn't matter. Wait, that came out wrong."

Agent Carter is staring at her. "You have no idea how to talk to people, do you?"

She feels the tips of her ears burn. "Um, no. Not really. I only really talked to my sketches. And Elsa."

"Who's Elsa?"

"My sister." Before she can elaborate, though, the car pulls up to a nondescript pawn shop, and Agent Carter leads her inside, and then through an _actual secret passage_ into an underground laboratory.

She looks with trepidation at the contraption she'll have to get into. It looks like a coffin. But they _chose her_ , and she wants this so badly, that it could be an actual coffin and she'd still climb in with a smile on her face.

Dr. Erskine is gentle as he tightens the last of the straps and flips down the injection pads. The serum feels like ice in her veins, and she idly wonders if this is how Elsa feels all the time, with the winter inside her.

Then Anna's sealed inside and the scientists turn on the power, and the feeling of ice melts away. It _burns_ through her, hot and brutal. Her vision goes white. She feels like a sword, thrust into the flame until she's white-hot, and then pounded into a new shape. At some point, she realizes she's screaming because she hears Dr. Erskine and Agent Carter yelling for the test to stop and she _can't let that happen_.

"No! I can do this! I can do this!" It's the only words she can say, but they're the important ones. She repeats it over and over in her head, burning the words into her brain, into her soul, as they burn everything else into her body. She can do this. She was _born_ to do this.

And then the pain stops. She hears a hiss of air, and breathes in hard, and oh god. For the first time in forever, her lungs don't hurt when she does that. The breath comes free and easy. She opens her eyes, and wow, okay. Everything looks...shorter. The straps fall away, and she takes a step...

And nearly falls flat on her face. Instead, she falls into Agent Carter. "Careful there," the other woman says lightly.

It's strange. Her limbs are longer, solid-er. She doesn't know what to do with her feet, because nothing feels quite right, but she's getting the hang of it. Oh wow. This is _amazing_. Anna turns to Dr. Erskine with a brilliant smile on her face.

A gunshot rings out. And everything changes.


	3. said sister are you safe?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by ultranos

It all changes when the USO ships Anna and the rest of the troupe to Italy. They're only five miles from the front, and she's done the song-and-dance routine enough times that it really doesn't register that anything is different until she's greeted with disinterested silence and surly looks after she finishes the recruitment pitch.

"Honey, I already volunteered. How do you think I go out here?" someone calls from the audience.

Anna blinks and tries not to grimace. Right. What the hell was she thinking, giving the same speech out here? "Heh, come on, guys. We're all on the same side."

"I ain't got time for some clown in fairy boots!" another voice yells, and suddenly she's using her shield prop to deflect rotten fruit. Ugh, the rations must be _bad_ out here, and she curses the idiots who have her dressed up in this monkey suit for putting her out here.

"Look. I'll...I'll go see what I can do," she placates, and at least it stops the projectiles. She ducks backstage, and at least _someone_ on this disaster has a brain, because she passes the dancers on their way back out to cheers from the soldiers.

Being here, finally, out at the front...it really wasn't supposed to be like this. She's not _fighting_ , not like she wanted to, not like she promised to. She tried so hard to enlist, fought all the way through Basic, and this is what she's doing? The realization tastes like ashes in her mouth. God, even with the serum, she's still useless Anna Rogers. Still just a joke. Still just a spare that someone found a use for.

"Hello, Anna."

To be honest, Agent Carter is probably one of the _last_ people she expects to sneak up behind her. "Whoa. Hi. What are you doing here?"

"Officially, I'm not here at all. That was...quite a performance."

Anna snorts. "Yeah, right. You mean it sucked." She rubs the back of her neck. "This is not the crowd I'm used to."

"To be entirely honest, this is not where I expected you to be."

"At least I'm doing something. It's better than being stuck in a lab."

Carter raises an eyebrow. "And those are your only two options?" Anna looks down at her feet, at the mud caking them. "Anna, you were meant for more than this."

And maybe because she's tired of this dog-and-pony show. Maybe it's because she trusts and looks up to Agent Carter. Or maybe it's because the Agent's being honest and she wouldn't laugh at Anna. Whatever the reason is, it all just comes pouring out. She just...needs to get it off her chest. Maybe then her heart will stop hurting so much.

It's the sound of shouting and the muted rumbling of a truck just off the side of the stage that finally stops her flood of words. Both women turn to look. Anna feels her heart sink and her shoulders grow heavier as she sees a man missing half a leg be pulled from the ambulance.

"It's not surprising the reaction you got, not really," Agent Carter says as Anna turns her head towards her. "These soldiers, they're not much for pretty words and platitudes from back home. They've seen too much, out here. They're broken people who're still moving."

"What happened?"

Carter lets out a heavy breath. "Schmidt has a base, 30 miles from the front. A force of 200 were sent out to take it. Fifty of them returned. What you see here is all that remains of the 107th."

Anna feels like her heart just froze in her chest. _No, no, no no._ "The 107th?!"

"Yes, that's what I--Anna!"

Anna scrambles to her feet and bolts towards the command center. She's barely aware that Carter is chasing her. She barrels over some hapless private on the way in and sees the Colonel at a makeshift desk, slowly and methodically going through a stack of papers with a grim look on his face. He looks up at the sounds of commotion.

"Well, look who it is. You're in the wrong place for a song-and-dance number, lass. In case you haven't noticed, I'm in the middle of a war."

"Are those..." She can't form the words past numb lips.

The Colonel's expression softens a little. "I've had to fill out too many of these lately."

Anna swallows hard and forces herself to speak past the ice in her throat. "Elsa Barnes. B-A-R-"

"I can spell." He looks through the pile. "I'm sorry. Sergeant Barnes is MIA."

Missing in action. _Not dead, not dead._ The letters repeat like a mantra in her head. She still feels like she's freezing from the inside out, feels numb all over, but Elsa might still be _alive_. The small spark of hope burns in her chest.

"I'm going after her."

"Lass, I can't let you do that. There's 30 miles of enemy territory between us and the base, and we don't know if any of them are still alive. I can't spare the soldiers to go on a half-assed rescue mission."

It really doesn't matter. Elsa's in _trouble_. After so many years, so many times, of Elsa watching her back, it's Anna's turn. Anna would climb up a goddamn ice mountain after her sister; a US Colonel doesn't stand a chance.

"I'm _going_."

"Lass..."

"She's my _sister_."

And the Colonel's face breaks. He turns to one of his aides. "Get me Sergeant Barnes file." He faces Anna again, and this time, his voice is gentler than she's ever heard him be. "I didn't know that."

"I didn't...I didn't really tell anyone. Elsa's always been special. I didn't want anyone to think I was riding her coat-tails." She tries to keep her voice even. "It helped that we have different last names. Her father was gone when she was a baby, and Mom remarried and had me. He left her his name, and she never changed it."

The aide hands him a folder. The Colonel takes it but doesn't open it. "But she's your sister."

"Yeah."

He leans back in his chair. "I really should have guessed. Of course you two would be related." He sighs, and looks over her shoulder. "But I'm afraid I can't authorize a rescue mission, Captain."

"But I can." Anna spins around, and sees Agent Carter leaning against a tent post with the beginnings of a sly smile on her face.

"You are outside my command. I can't allow resources diverted to this, even though intel says that such a mission would have the best chance of success if you can manage a two-hour window starting at 21:45, coming from the north-east." He gives Carter a hard stare. "I certainly can't provide transportation to get you there in time. I'm sorry, Captain. You should take one of the jeeps back to the airbase as soon as possible. I wouldn't want you to be late for your next engagement."

Anna's blinking hard and about to open her mouth to argue when Carter loops an arm through hers and drags her away. "Come on, Anna. Let the Colonel get back to work." She pulls her towards a jeep, hops in, and starts the engine.

"But--!"

"Captain Rogers, you heard the Colonel. Get in the jeep. We need to get to the airbase." Her smile is sharp enough to cut through steel. "And I have a favor I need to call in."

"A favor?"

"Mr. Stark _did_ offer to take me up on one of his planes whenever I wanted. I suppose over Italy, say, 35 miles from here, is a fantastic use of the offer. Wouldn't you agree?"

Anna blinks again as she puts it together. Oh. _Oh._ She feels herself smiling, feels that spark of hope roar into a fire in her chest. She hops in the jeep. "Well then, what are we waiting for?"

_Hold on, Elsa. You're not leaving me behind again. Just hold on._


	4. There Are More than Nations Inside Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elsa POV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- redonthefly

They are marching.

Mud squelches under their feet and sucks at the soles of their boots, and the air is damp but free. She never thought she’d feel it from the air alone, in how it feels to fill her lungs, or the caress of wind on her cheeks, fingers of it combing her hair into a wild mess, tendrils escaping from her braid to tickle her neck.

It’s November, at least that’s what she thinks, and the Italian mountainsides are slippery with the beginnings of winter. There’s a persistent drizzle, and sometimes it pours, the days melting into each other in the haze. A soldier’s life is the march. Keep moving forward. Keep pressing in. Don’t ever stop. Don’t ever give up.

The company is a mess, all of them really; Zola’s compound has taken its toll, and she can see it in the worn and weary faces, in the slouch of shoulders and the fractions of seconds between each step. There are less of them too, a fact that hangs heavy around them, a blanket of quiet grief. But they are moving, the war machine chugging along, surviving, and in that movement, there’s hope.

Hope is a powerful thing, Elsa knows; it can sustain a person to points far beyond simple human endurance. She glances behind her at the parade of soldiers, and sees their eyes fixed ahead, following the chapped leather jacket and bounce of red braids under a stolen helmet; Anna, their hero, their savoir when it seemed like all hope had been lost.

Elsa watches her out of the corner of her eye. Anna’s steps are sure, shoulders square and defiant, head held high. Her posture has always been rigid, drawn up like an angry cat, trying to appear bigger, stronger. It falls more naturally to her now – whatever she’s let them do to her has lengthened her legs, broadened her hips and shoulders. Before, Anna would get winded climbing the castle steps. Now she can march for hours without breaking a sweat, a gun nestled comfortably in the crook of her arm, and her shield strapped to her back.

Against the bleak greys and greens of the forest, the bright golden crocus on a field of purple almost glows. Watching it bounce through the trees, Elsa feels a wash of homesickness, and swallows hard around the lump in her throat. It threatens to take her breath away, the incongruity of Anna being here, her sweet and tiny sister. It was supposed to be one of life’s little ironies, that the delicate nature that haunted her in some way every season (asthma, pneumonia, influenza – they’re all Anna’s ghosts) was the thing that should have spared her from this, the terrible, grinding wretchedness of war.

She’s spent more nights bedside than she cares to count, holding Anna’s boney hand under a pile of quilts, bathing her forehead with cool water and watching as she struggled to breathe. It has always been impossible to hinder her spirit however, and that, at least, Elsa can still plainly see: the set of her shoulders, the steady beat of her feet on the ground, expression protective and determined and, although she is not smiling, alight with purpose and satisfaction.

Anna never could stand the idea of the world passing her by, of a life sheltered, of what she felt was a privilege she didn’t deserve.

“You’re going, and you’re a princess too,” Anna says, arms crossed tightly. “So you can’t tell me it’s because of my title Elsa; I know it’s not. I know you don’t think I can do it, but –”

“That’s not it. Someone has to stay, Anna. Arendelle needs someone here too.” Anna rolls her eyes, mouth pinched tight in a scowl, but lets the lie pass without comment.

“People are laying down their lives, Elsa. I’ve got no right to do any less than that.”

Elsa sighs, pulling the pack onto her shoulder and straightening her hat, deliberately avoiding the anger and hurt radiating out of Anna’s expression.

“Just…don’t do anything stupid until I get back, okay?”

“How can I,” Anna mutters, “when you’re taking it all with you?”

“Punk.”

“Jerk.”

Elsa turns and salutes, watching for the familiar fondness to creep back into Anna’s face before slipping out the castle gates. She’ll be safe there at least, behind the stone walls and infantry, behind the circlet in her hair and the wheeze in her lungs. No one can hurt her here.

Anna glances at her then and catches her eye, falling in step beside her, and Elsa can’t help but keep her lips from twisting into a wry grin – she’s done it anyway, the little punk. Princess Anna. Out to save the world.

Under her feet, the terrain is growing rocky and pitches upward. They march on, the whole lot of them quiet except for the white noise of cloth on cloth, and the occasional soft clatter of metal. Anna falls back a little, no doubt to check on someone, and Elsa draws another full breath and marvels privately at the easy, controlled nature of it. She should be breathing harder now – they are climbing mountains on foot, after all – but the burn in her thighs is negligible and her lungs are cool; it’s disconcerting after weeks of feverish shaking and shuddering, scraggly breaths and she wonders, not for the first time, just what they’d done, what perversion they’d pumped her with on that table.

More disconcerting is that she can’t decide if she minds. Elsa has never been frail before, has never felt broken and weak in body or mind. Her exposure to these things has always been secondhand, through Anna, indomitable spirit betrayed by some twisted fact of nature. To be on the other side, dependent and helpless, agency stripped away and future handed to a madman in his sickening mountain laboratory – she shudders, and shoves the memories down deep, slamming them into the earth. What’s done is done. She’s stronger now for certain, and if the cold air and the exertion don’t exact their normal cost…so much the better for keeping up with her sister, a fire that won’t go out, but still needs someone to mind.

Up ahead there’s a flash of white and red that jostles her out of her memories, and a gasp catches unbidden in her throat. It’s their camp, slowly emerging before them, revealing tents and tanks that blend seamlessly into the trees, men appearing like ghosts when they turn, pale faces like candle lights in a dark room.

Behind her a whoop and a roar as the scene unfolds to the marching 107th, a cheer rising and carrying them the last quarter mile up the hill, through the risen gate, into the heart of camp. Anna takes her position in the front and Elsa follows half a step behind, not quite able to smile when Anna looks for her over her shoulder, checking to see that they’re together still.

Everyone talks at once, and it’s more noise that she’s heard in days: men and women clamoring to pat Anna on the back, to tell the others the story of their escape, of the factory, the man with the red sideburns. In the middle of the chaos Elsa watches quietly as a tall blonde pushes his way into the circle and although she can’t hear what Anna says to him, something shines in her eyes when he speaks.

Other conversations flow, nameless commentary in the buzz of activity.

“Did you see her with that shield?”

“I couldn’t believe it, myself.”

“I thought we were going to die there.”

“Perfect soldier – a fighting machine.”

“Super serum, I hear, something unnatural – ”

Soldier. Unnatural. Elsa hears the word spoken aloud and it’s all it takes for her heart to finally break; it’s unnatural for Anna to be here, in the middle of war, the one person she swore to protect, who was never supposed to be brought into this mire of pain and loss and violence.

“Let’s hear it for Princess Anna!” She shouts, voice cracking, and uses the enormous cheer that erupts throughout the camp as a cover to slip into an empty tent.

In the semi darkness, her tears freeze on her cheeks.


	5. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- redonthefly

[ _Day is done_ ]

The send her home in an empty box, except there is no more home, and the box contains nothing but a memory of someone who was.

(She is, and she is not.)

Someone signs a stack of documents  and the empty box and the ghost come to a new home, shipped with so many like it – pine, plain and cured, slim shapes draped in the flags of their fathers, gently but consciously laid next to each other like matchsticks.

The ghost became letters and numbers stamped hurriedly on pieces of paper, her name and her rank and her serial number ( _Sergeant, 325572_ ) in blank ink, fading with each repetition until the words are faint and grey.

Gloved hands cover the plain pine box and walk her through a grassy field, herself and a line of others.  

It is May, almost June. It is a cold day.

Matchsticks, up and down the rows, red and white and blue under an overcast sky.

White pants in sharp pleats. A glint of brass. High polish on boots and guns. There are black hats and handkerchiefs and trembling fingers.

(there is a wailing from somewhere among the white picket fences of Arlington; it is not for her.)

They give her ghost a three rifle volley, shots splitting the still air, and lower the empty box deep into an empty grave.

Her name is carved into stone.

*

[ _Gone the sun]_

She expects it to be a loud thing, a crash and a scream and fire, but it isn’t.

It is loud, but in the strange and quietest of ways; white noise and whiter snow, the ice shrieking and metal bending until in fact, she can not hear anything at all.

There is no fire.

There is a very little sliver of light from somewhere  above – that which is the faintest of rays – blue light, and blue sky in blue eyes.

That is all she can see.

She remembers being a child, the ache in her chest and the feeling of something  drawing on her skin with ice, raking shins and along forearms, holding her arms vice tight to her sides – it has been a short time and a long time since she was bothered by the cold.

There are snowflakes, incongruously; they fall on her nose and into her eyelashes.

She closes her eyes.

The water is dark above her head, and still so cold (she is  _so cold_ ) and the falling snow slowly blots out the sun.

*

[ _From the lakes_ ]

She is dust and scattered stone and ash, her people grey faced and gone, blown into the wind on trains and steam ships.

She was green and gold and purple, maypoles in spring mornings, mountain primrose in alpine meadows.

She is black soot and red scars in the earth, and a crimson and yellow flag flapping against an empty sky.

 _The cost of war_ , people in pressed suits whisper, signing her away, whisking in steel and the stomp of heavy boots, the roar of diesel engines with a sweep of blue fountain pen.

_It is the way it has to be._

(In quiet halls, heads are shaken and pints are nursed over chapped lips.  _It is a shame_ , they murmur to each other. She was so beautiful, once.)

*

[ _From the hills_ ]

On an island in the Atlantic, a fat man stubs out his cigar, taps it into a cut crystal tray.

“History is written by the victors,” he will say.

He is correct.

Because she was tall and strong and brave, because her country was razed and the violet wildflowers trampled underfoot, because she wore a uniform that was red, and white, and blue.

Smoke hangs in the air of a New York office, and another man wears a smart hat and a pinstripe suit and writes that she became a ‘Captain for America’, a beacon in their time of need.

There is victory in Europe.

Her story is sold in every paper in the world. The words are printed and reprinted, and they do not grow fainter, because she is not permitted to fade; she is not a ghost, she is larger than her life.

They raise a statue with her face polished in white marble, determined expression threaded with veins in grey.

(there is cheering. it is for her.)

A plaque rests by her feet and reads ‘Captain America’.

*

[ _From the sky_ ]

In 1961, a man puts his hand on a Bible and swears to preserve, protect and defend.

In 1962, ships meet in the Atlantic. They bristle with guns, they are heavy with men.

(the ocean is quiet)

In 1963 she wakes up.

She bristles with guns.

Her footsteps are heavy.

(a bullet make no sound in the air)

She does not remember the delicate pink, the flashes of red, the green of the grass, or the blueness of the December sky.

She does not remember the cheering, the screaming, the sounds of sirens in the distance, or the squeal of bald tires on asphalt.

In 1963, she goes back to sleep.

(she remembers the leather, the ugly hum of electricity, the feeling of metal on her temples)

*

[ _All is well_ ]

On Sundays they scrub her name, softly, with gentle hands and a soft brush, liniment and soap over the white stone.

Grass is not permitted to grow on her, moss will not be allowed to bloom in the curves of vowels, the consonants and sounds.

Marble is witness to decades.

Black and white oxfords, pale orange pumps, soft penny loafers, rubber sandals, boots.

Hands run over her, and they are soft and fragile, skin crepey and spotted. They are young, with bitten nails, raw cuticles and chipped polish, and callouses on the fingertips.

It is spring and summer and autumn and winter and spring.

(she is still)

*

[ _Safely rest_ ]

Ice is an odd thing: it is at once sweeping beautiful and crystal, gentle curves, delicate like frost, and powerful, carving mountains, splitting timber and stone.

(and slow, always slow.)

It is killer, savior.

It fills up her veins, but she does not crack, she does not break.

She can move mountains now.

(she will change the world)

When she was a little girl she watched the curls of ice crawling up her bedroom window, pushed warm fingertips into the panes of glass and drew pictures in the frost. She cut shapes into white paper and hung them from door frames, and clapped her hands and smiled.

It is appropriate, she thinks. She always felt she would die young.

Ice is a metal cage, a coffin that is not a coffin, a box that is not a box.

(they close the lid)

(she pushes down the throttle)

(it is cold)

…she is alive.


	6. Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- redonthefly

Slap slap. Slap slap. (Inhale. Exhale.) Slap slap. Slap slap.

The sound is imaginary, felt in the rhythm of her feet against the pavement, the jarring in her bones as the shock of impact moves up her ankles and knees. There’s no pain : no ache from lifting shoes made of heavy leather or canvas, and the muscles and tendons in her legs are strong and thick, hard and ropey from a lifestyle of sprinting and super-serum.

She runs hard - harder than she should probably, she’s still only human - but enough to feel her body, make it hers again with the burn in her lungs and thighs, until she’s wobbly and hungry for breakfast.

Her shoes are some combination of rubber and foam, so lightweight she can barely feel them and electric blue, because at the time it seemed cheerful (and of all the neon colors in the shop, she likes blue the best.)

(Natasha bought a purple and yellow pair; they look like wildflowers on her feet. Anna will never mention it, but it does make her smile.)

Slap slap. Slap slap.

She’s used to it now, how this is nearly silent, how she can eat swaths of pavement and make no noise. In the steely grey of morning, there’s only the steady sound of her breath dragging in and out, the whisper from the fabric of her running shorts, the faintest murmur of traffic in the distance.

It’s unconscious. Effortless. So unlike the willful silence of the soldier, crouched in the mud and rain, placing each step carefully (so carefully, watch for twigs, mind the puddles, don’t trip we’re right on top of ‘em now, hissed voices in the darkness) and she does not think about that, does not, will not, because this is just a run, it’s the same every morning, blissfully boring.

(Inhale. Exhale.)

On a good day, she can run the 4 mile loop of the National Mall several times before the city stirs, rousing into a bright cacophony of horns and voices, and the smell of coffee grounds and gasoline.

It’s a good day.

She stutters to a stop at the edge of the park, breathing deeply and gratefully, one hand against a thin tree, the other wrapped around her shoe, pulling into a deep stretch. There’s a breeze coming in over the reflecting pool, cooling the sweat on her forehead and raising goosebumps along the back of her arms; under her thin shirt, the familiar weight of a metal chain is cold against her neck.

It’s not until she spots him that she realizes she’s been scanning the crowd around her – not a crowd so much, not really, it’s still early – taking in faces and patterns (tall black man always jogging down the street in his pinstripe suit, perpetually late; round woman with short blonde hair and the briefcase, waiting to cross the street, tapping her toe; taxi man with his baseball hat pulled low down on his face against the rising sun, idling in the no-parking zone).

He does stand out a little, amid the suits and ties, and she recognizes him right away: longish hair, jeans, a t-shirt, zipper front sweatshirt.

(It’s not often she recognizes a face in the crowd and knows the name and story behind it: Kristoff Bjorgman. 58th para-rescue. Works at the VA. Runs slower than she does.)

Before she really knows what she’s doing, she’s pulling sweatpants on over her shorts, and jogging down the street, one arm waving.

*

“So what do you go by these days, anyway?” He asks as they meander away from the coffee cart, slowing when he carefully passes her the white cardboard cup (it’s black, extra hot; she can’t get past the idea of coffee any other way).

“What do you mean?”

“What,” he articulates, grinning around the lid of his own drink, “do you call yourself? Seems like everyone has a name for you these days: Captain Arendelle, Princess Anna – Xena, if you talk to the right people – so what do you like?”

Anna laughs, and winces when it comes out sounding more bitter, more cold that she intended, like a bark or a truncated sob.

“Captain Arendelle? Princess Anna? Sorry Kristoff, it’s just - Arendelle doesn’t exist anymore.”

Kristoff takes a sip from his cup and doesn’t say anything, which she appreciates, because this is the first time she’s said the words out loud, and if he tried to say ‘it’s okay, or it will get better’ she might have been tempted to test the strength of her fingers against his face. He doesn’t though: just plucks at the frayed corner of the coffee sleeve and waits for her to continue, brown eyes kind and thoughtful.

“You probably already know this, but Arendelle disappeared in the Cold War,” she huffs. “ It’s part of the Russian state now. I don’t have a home, and I’m certainly not a princess.”

Kristoff nods, and says, “You’ve been to the Smithsonian,” which is not a question – he’s mentally checking off boxes under her name; it would bother her, she thinks, if it were anyone else. He’s a stranger still, well, practically, but there’s something comforting about being around him, this person who walks and talks like a soldier, stands with back ramrod straight, and takes his coffee black, army strong and inky. (Once she might have recognized it as a potential friendship, but like so many other things, it’s an unfamiliar sensation, to be reflected upon later.) She nods, and rolls her shoulders in a sort of half shrug.

“Granted honorary citizenship in 1950, revived in 2012, rank and position restored in the United States Armed Forces, recruited and currently employed by the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.”

“Anna, that is practically word for word what it says on the exhibit.”

“Well, that’s who they say I am now.”

“Is that who you want to be?”

They’ve stopped walking. Anna swallows, watching a pair of joggers over Kristoff’s shoulder, letting his question mellow before answering. Steam blows off her unlidded coffee in the early morning air, but the day is going to be warm and clear, sun rising unobstructed in the sky.

“I know you’re out,” she says, feeling the words out slowly. “But – the army, or some branch, I’m not even sure what you’d even call SHIELD – it gives me a place, and a purpose.” Anna pauses, and looks up into Kristoff’s face. He’s almost smiling, mostly with his eyes. “I can work with that for now.”

He quirks his lips but doesn’t reply, claps a hand against her shoulder and they resume walking, feet quiet on the pavement. It’s a few minutes before they speak again, content to meander slowly in the direction of downtown DC, watching as traffic picks up around them and the city blooms with pedestrians and bicyclists, more joggers and people walking their dogs, talking on cellphones and inhaling coffee from silver and black tumblers. They’re waiting for a crosswalk to blink green when Kristoff pulls his not-coffee hand out of his jacket pocket, checks his watch, snorts, and gives her a keen look.

“Restored your rank, eh? That would make you a Captain?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay then,” Kristoff says, and shuffles over to punch the opposite crossing bell. “I need to head back to the VA, but you keep doing superhero-y stuff and swing by if you want to chat.”

“It’s been good talking,” Anna says, and finds she means it sincerely. 

He nods with the same considered not-quite smile as before and says “Look out for yourself, Cap,” before stepping out into the crosswalk.

She grins then, forcing the smile through the melancholy she can feel building (it grows like a scowl in the back of her mind, and she doesn’t have the time to nurse that today – not today) and spreads her hands in a sweeping gesture in front of her.

“That’s me,” she calls, half bowing, spilling coffee on the pavement, and ignoring the way the chain with her dog tags slips out of her shirt and dangles, twisting, in the air in front of her nose. “Captain America. At your service.”


	7. Cold Hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by whisperwhisk

The sound of Soldier’s metal fist on Anna’s shield filled the world, vast and hollow, an avalanche of sound that pressed on her from all directions. Shieldless, the blow would have crushed her like a twig. Or like a car. Even through the shield, the force of it echoed through her body, and her every muscle strained to stand. Though the Soldier’s face and hair were covered beneath a tight hood and a ski mask, she’d lost her goggles, and as she drove her metal fist downward, their eyes met.

                The Soldier’s eyes were blue as a glacier and just as cold, just as dead. Something about them made Anna’s stomach lurch. She knew those eyes, but they were so _wrong_ , they were supposed to be-

                With a mechanical whine, the Soldier’s arm pressed down, driving Anna toward the concrete. It was a simple move: Anna could either fall and be crushed beneath her own shield, or break her back trying to stand. She chose to stand. The Soldier was fast and strong, vicious and ruthless. She could deal with that, except for that _arm_. There was a chill to it that struck deeper than flesh and bone. Anna couldn’t do this for much longer, but if she couldn’t keep the Soldier busy, she’d find Kristoff and Natasha, and she’d…no. No. Anna could do this. She _would_.

                With a scream, Anna pressed her shoulder against the shield and shoved. She drove the its edge into the Soldier’s stomach, knocking her back. With the edge still in the Soldier’s stomach, Anna bulled forward like a linebacker, driving the masked woman back and slamming her into the side of a white van. It made a large dent.

                She could _do this_.

                The Soldier snapped her head of and shot Anna a look of… _what_? There was something behind those dead blue eyes. There was also no time to find out. The Soldier gripped Anna’s shoulder with her metal arm and in a single whirling motion, spun away to the right and slammed Anna into the side of the van, face first, right in the same dent. Her shield took most of the force out of the blow, but Anna’s right shoulder was growing numb where the Soldier had grabbed her. And she had another problem. The Soldier was behind her. And her shield was in front.

                There was a mechanical clicking sound just behind her head. Anna dropped the shield and caught the Soldier’s metal arm by the wrist, just above her head. It was _cold_ , and her fingers tingled and burned. From the angle of the wrist, she could tell that the metal hand above it held a knife, assuming it was built like a normal hand. Anna really hoped it was, because if she was wrong, what she was about to try would probably end with a knife in her back. But her hands were cramping. She had to do it now.

                Anna gripped that metal wrist and pulled forward.

                With both Anna and the Soldier driving it forward, the knife punched straight through the car’s siding. The Soldier pressed the blade downward toward Anna’s head, Anna pushed it away to the right, and together they carved a long diagonal slash down the side of the van. The momentum brought both of them stumbling onto the open street in opposite directions. Anna whirled. So did the Soldier. They both took a moment to breathe. The air had a harsh, dry chill that burned Anna’s throat. It was late spring. Why was it so cold?

                Back to the van, the Soldier kicked up Anna’s fallen shield, catching it on her flesh-and-blood arm. She studied the shield for moment, tilting her head at it, then at Anna.

                Anna shivered. Her feet moved, not sure if they wanted to step forward or back. “Uh.  Hi,” she said. “What are you-”

                The Soldier whipped a knife out. With knife in one hand and shield in another, the masked woman darted toward Anna and launched into a flurry of strikes. _Punch, cut, cut, shield strike, cut, thrust, kick_ , each strike following the last with such speed and fluidity that they seemed to merge together, driving Anna back, back. There was no room to counter, only to block, evade, retreat. And she wouldn’t be able to do that for long, The chill sunk into her, slowing her, dulling every sensation except the cuts and bruises on every inch of her body. She couldn’t do this for long.

                Still, she could delay. She could keep the Soldier focused on her and away from the shootout that raged around them, away from Kristoff and Natasha. Anna wouldn’t make it, but they could-

                A white star filled her vision, set into a deep blue circle.

                The world flashed. A formless noise seemed to explode from within her skull and out her ears. Behind it came a flash of pain.

                The world tilted left and right, and Anna stumbled backward. Steadying herself, she blinked. What had happened? The pain receded to a slow buzzing between her ears. The Soldier had punched her. In the face. With her own shield.

                That was NOT okay.

                 The Solder cut at Anna’s hand; she swatted the knife down so hard it shattered on the ground. “GIVE!” Ignoring the cold, Anna grabbed the metal arm with both hands and gave it a good twist. Something popped inside it. “ME!” She braced her feet, using the metal arm it as a lever to shove the Soldier back and to the right, putting the totaled van at her back. “BACK!” She dashed forward and gave the shield a sharp roundhouse kick, knocking it out of the way. The Soldier was open. “MY!” An elbow to the Soldier’s chest kept her off balance, and she stumbled back against the van. “ _SHIELD!_ ” Anna grabbed the Soldier’s human arm, the one that held the shield. She ducked beneath it and swept the Soldier’s legs out from under her. Anna rose in a spin, swung the Soldier all the way around like a hammer thrower, and flung her into the air.

                The shield flipped into the air, and so did the Soldier. Anna caught the shield. The Soldier turned in midair and landed on her feet, facing away.

                Her mask landed separately. Her hood was down.

                Silver-white hair tumbled from the Soldier’s head. It was shaggy and unkempt, but Anna knew it just the same.

                The Soldier turned her head, and Anna’s heart froze.

                “Elsa?” she heard herself say.

                The temperature dropped forty degrees. Anna wasn’t imagining it: she could feel the sweat had freezing on her forehead.

                Those dead eyes blinked. “Who the hell is Elsa?”


	8. peel the scars from off my back (I don't need them anymore)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> by counterpunches 
> 
> (This chapter jumps ahead a little bit)

It all starts when her sister showed up on the doorstep. It seems like the end of a story - a lost loved one drowned at sea, battle-tossed, war-scarred, reunited at last - but it’s really only the beginning. Elsa's come home, but the Winter Soldier never quite leaves. It lingers in doorways and darkness, in shadow and sleep. 

Because some days Anna walks out of her room and finds Elsa standing in the hallway, facing a blank wall, staring into nothing.  

"Elsa?" She says tentatively because she wasn't sure who, exactly, she was talking to. The person in front of her snaps her head to look at Anna. 

Sometimes the eyes are hard.

Sometimes they're empty.

Sometimes it doesn't recognize her.

Other times she does.

Elsa’ll flinch when Anna takes a step towards her or fall forward, ready to be caught in Anna's opens arms. It depends on the night.

Anna's doing the catching most of the time these days.

 

Sometimes the winter grips Elsa and it doesn't let her go and Anna has to bust through a door covered over in ice. Elsa's curled up tight in the middle of the bed asleep, but her eyes are scrunched up tight and she's shaking like the cold bothers her, trapped in some awful nameless, timeless past.

 

Sometimes Anna catches Elsa looking emptily at her hands. Staring down like they're not a part of her and she's seeing them for the first time.

"I see their faces," she says, cracking. 

"It's not your fault," Anna whispers and gathers her close.

“They _stare_ at me.” Elsa's dark, haunted eyes turn to her, begging for things Anna cannot give her.

"They're not looking at _you_ , Elsa. _You_ weren't there."

 

Some nights Anna jerks awake, hair on the back of her neck tingling, and freezes at the figure hovering in the bed above her. Elsa is all ice, then; solid and hard, eyes cold and empty. Her arm is cocked back ready to strike: powerful, coiled, waiting.

"Elsa?" she whispers at the thing above her.

She says it again, more forcefully this time. Harder. "Elsa." 

It blinks. 

"Come back to me, Elsa.”

It takes her a moment to get through because sometimes her sister still wakes up as a weapon. _How do you disarm something that doesn't know what it is?_

_How do you bring back summer?_

* * *

 Before Elsa, there was only Anna. 

Anna who woke up confused and alone in a box of a bedroom, (which reminded her far _far_ too much of her childhood), alone in a world where there was nobody who loved her. Sure, people knew Captain America. But no one knew _Anna_.

Anna, the girl who lived with perpetual scabbed knees and was as stubborn as an ass. Who sung at the top of her lungs off-key and didn't care what anyone thought. Who took her time eating ice cream in the summer because she wanted it to last as long as possible, even if it ran down her fingers and made everything sticky. Anna, who had a sister.

A sister no one talked about, but instead looked quickly away if she was brought up. A sister the nation mourned and memorialized, but forgot that before Elsa was an American hero, she was Anna's, first. No one knows _Elsa_ the same way no one knows _Anna_. Who they really were before the world got in the way. The Elsa who bandaged Anna's knees and bought her the ice cream in the summer. The Elsa who held Anna when she had nightmares and checked for monsters before she went to bed.

Anna who went to sleep trying to save the world only to wake up to one that still needs so much help and sometimes she just feels so _tired_. 

It’s been three years since she thawed, but sometimes it feels like the cold never left her because some mornings Anna wakes up shivering, gasping for breath like she's still drowning; like she's still falling out of the sky.

But then Kristoff is there, and with one hand on her back, rubs the life back into her. He's got wings; he catches her.

Curling into him, she isn't Captain America anymore, no one's princess, no one's captain. The wings are locked up at headquarters, but Kristoff doesn't need them, he's a healer with his hands. It's as simple as a touch; as murmured words to soothe her when she wakes from a nightmare. When he smoothes her hair and holds her close so she can hears the _thump thump_ of his heart and knows she has a place in this new century. They aren't soldiers anymore and he knows _Anna_. She's on his left, he’s on her right, and with Elsa somewhere in the middle, together they can move forward.

* * *

 

They're each others’ fixer-uppers - all of them. Each have their broken pieces and scars, but sometimes it’s easier to heal someone other than yourself: to focus on someone else's hurt instead of your own. And eventually, one day, you wake up to realize those hurts are gone; that they don't ache the same way they used to. Because they're not alone in their pain. Together they keep the ghosts at bay. 

Kristoff knows. He's washed the blood off plenty of other people's hands and helped put them back together again. He stands with Elsa as they do the dishes in a heavy comfortable silence and sometimes Anna wakes up to them talking in hushed voices out on the fire escape late into the night.

He works at the VA, catching people after they fall, helping them land: to find footing, solid ground. Roots. Something new to stand on. It's something they all need, _terra firma_ , solid ground when the plates between past and present can shift so suddenly and they fall between the cracks.

Alone they're a fraction of their broken parts but together they’re whole; a family. They're bare in front of each other - naked with their hurts and their pain, and there is no hiding in their home. They can’t; there’s nowhere to hide. Because Elsa bears hers on her arm, Kristoff in his wings, and Anna with the things she carries on her back.

But more and more it’s Elsa who wrests control from her past, and the Winter Soldier slowly realizes it’s not welcome in their home anymore. There is no place for it here. 

Not when Kristoff works out with Elsa and they take turns bench pressing each other effortlessly, Elsa smirking while Kristoff complains whenever she does it one-handed.

When they make pancakes and eggs on Sunday mornings.

When shadows fade a little farther away as Elsa hums under her breath while she's cooking. Anna walks into the kitchen while Elsa’s singing to the radio like she used to and it almost seems like nothing ever happened. Almost as though they’re kids again.

 

Like in the middle of the night when Anna shuffles into the living room in her kitty cat PJs, yawning and rubbing her eyes. Elsa’s already wrapped up in a blanket on the couch with a book in her lap.

“Can’t sleep? Elsa asks.

Anna shakes her head. "Nope. Feel like I've done enough of that for a lifetime.” She slumps into the couch and buries herself into her sister’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” Elsa says. "Me too."

 

**The End**

  
  



	9. how can it recognize you, unless you step out into the light?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> by ultranos  
> Title from "True Love Will Find You in the End" - Matthew Good

It was all Anna's fault, really. That's the story Elsa's going to give anyone who asks. 

"Okay. That's it. You are not staying cooped up in this apartment any longer." Anna actually slams her foot down. Kristoff takes one look at her expression and decides that he totally has a session at the VA _right now_. Elsa just looks up, cereal spoon paused in the air, milk dripping into the bowl. She blinks. Blinks again. Then lets the cornflakes finish their journey to her mouth. 

"The sun is good for you! You kept telling me that for years, and I don't think that sort of thing changes. So. We are going to a park, and _you can't say anything about it._ " 

Elsa chews, then swallows. "Okay." 

"It'll be fun and you don't have to worry, everyone sees weird things here, not that you're weird, wait, what?" 

"I said 'okay'. Can I finish breakfast?" 

"Oh! Um, sure. Totally." And it's same-different, seeing Anna like this, still. Big (so very big, larger-than-life, like she always was, but now the outside matches the inside, and it feels like she lost a piece of herself in missing it) and confident, but still unsure around her. She remembers watching, she remembers the Winter Soldier watching, analyzing, assessing Captain America, looking for weaknesses and breakpoints, places a blade or a bullet could shatter. Elsa's pretty sure, terribly, horribly certain, that the Winter Soldier _did_ shatter Captain America into so many shards, but _Anna_ was stronger than steel and broke the Soldier instead. 

These thoughts are circling in her head as she pulls on a jacket. It's too warm out for it, but the long sleeves hide her arm, the damn reminder of her past that drags her down to drown in the blood and ice she left behind. But Anna's fingers are warm as she clasps Elsa's other hand, her real one (Anna won't touch the metal arm; Elsa thinks Anna should not have the blood that coats it smeared on her), and Anna's always been able to pull her faster. So she lets herself be pulled along in Anna's wake, out into the sun and organized chaos of the city. 

The park isn't that far. There's a pond with ducks and a baseball diamond, but a good portion is dominated by playground equipment and a number of small children running around. Judging from the number of adults on park benches keeping watch, they must be the parents, and there's not a lot of anyone else. Anna drags her over to the pond to watch the birds. There's a mother with a string of ducklings following her around in the water, cheeping happily. There's a littler one lagging behind. Elsa frowns. It's going to be in trouble soon. But then another duckling peels off and swims back to the straggler and nudges it along. 

Anna elbows her in the ribs. "That's familiar." 

Oh. 

"Not really," she mumbles, pulling the jacket closer. It's a duck. It's going to grow up, hopefully, to do...duck things. Eat. Lay eggs. Swim. Whatever else it is ducks do. Ducks don't have to deal with dreams of ice and cold and darkness that chokes you until your throat is raw. And its sibling won't be there to protect it forever. It won't last. 

(It always blows away, when winter comes.) 

Anna is giving her a look that she can't understand. (And she curses Hydra under every god she can name for taking away her language of _Anna_ and replacing it with a cage of orders and protocols she still can't always find the key for.) Before she can say anything, though, her phone rings. She pulls a face, looks at it, and her frown grows deeper. "Crap. I have to take this. Um..." 

Elsa waves her off. "It's okay. I'll just go sit on one of the benches. Go...go save the world or whatever." 

Anna rolls her eyes and walks off. Elsa sticks her metal hand into her jacket pocket and walks over to an unoccupied bench over by the monkey bars. There are a couple of kids, maybe six years old at most, scrambling over the equipment. Not one of them pay her any mind. She can admit it's nice to see kids being kids. She and Anna, they never had equipment like this to play on. But it's the same sort of thing, watching them grab for bars and egg each other on. 

Speaking of, it looks like one of the boys got convinced to do something. He's scrambling up the bars and...now he's _on top_ of the structure. He's tensed up, and oh, he's going to jump. One of the parents shouts as soon as his feet leave the mental, and Elsa jolts. She can tell in an instant the boy's jumped wrong, that he's going to fall on his arm, and she can already hear the snap of small bone in her mind. She can see the moment he realizes he did it wrong, teal eyes (so much like a little girl she used to know) wide in terror, and she throws out her arm _on instinct_. 

The boy lands in a pile of fresh snow. 

The playground is dead silent. The kids are staring at her. The _parents_ are staring at her. And all she can see is her metal arm, fingers splayed wide, pointed at the snowbank. Shit. She forgot gloves. 

Before she can shove her hand back into her pocket and get up to run, though, the yelling starts. 

"OH WOW. THAT IS _SO COOL_." 

"Did you _see_ that?" 

"Can you do that again? Please?" 

"Yeah! Please, miss!" 

And all of a sudden, Elsa has a gaggle of six year olds tugging at her sleeves, begging her to play with them. She looks over at the parents, and while they all look wary, not one of them looks ready to come in and swipe a child away from her. (Why aren't they? Don't they know who she _is_? Metal arm, ice in _July_ , there were news reports of Captain America fighting the Winter Soldier. Why aren't they taking them away?) When she looks back, a little girl is staring at her hand. The metal one. 

She looks up, eyes wide behind glasses. "You're like my cousin!" 

"Huh?" 

She looks at it again, mouth turned down in a little frown. "Uh-huh. My cousin has a different arm. Daddy says she lost her old one in Af-ghan-i-stan," the girl pronounces it slowly, making sure she gets it right. "Daddy says it makes her a hero." She looks up. "Are you a hero too?" 

Before Elsa can even begin to answer that (god no, she's not a hero. She's what heroes are sent to _fight_. She's the _monster_ ), the little boy in the snowbank pipes up. "Of course she is! She saved me!" 

This, apparently, is the only judgment needed, because they begin tugging at her in earnest. Before she can really process what's happening (and she spent _how many_ years as the deadliest assassin in the world?), there are three kids hanging off her metal arm, another one standing on her shoulders, a fifth clinging to her back, and at least three more tugging on her pants, all shrieking happily. 

This is how Anna finds them. Her sister stares at them for a solid thirty seconds. (She counted.) 

"What." 

"I swear to god, I have no idea." 

And then Anna pulls out her phone again to start taking pictures. "Oh my god, this is going on my Twitter. 'Winter Soldier: Feared Assassin or Jungle Gym'?" 

"Will you stop standing there and _help_ me?" 

"Hah, no way! You look like you've got this under control." 

" _There are eight of them_ " she grits out. 

And Anna stops being able to hold back her laughter. "You handled one of me just fine when we were kids!" 

"...point." Elsa feels a smile tugging at her lips. 

"Hey!" 

The kid on her back, the little girl with glasses, tugs on her jacket collar. "Miss, can you do the magic again?" Some of the other kids hear her, and take up the call. 

"Do the magic! Do the magic!" 

Elsa freezes. Her eyes flicker over to Anna. And she hears, echoing through the years, another childish voice asking the same thing. _"Do the magic, Elsa!"_ So many times in those hungry years, back before everything. When she was whole, but Anna wasn't hale. And when she looks at her sister now, it was a fair trade. 

She feels the weight of three little bodies hanging off her arm, the arm that's toppled regimes and coated in red so deep it will never wash off. But as they hang on it, looking up at her with pleading eyes, their little hands wipe it clean. They can't be tainted by it; they're stronger than it. 

Elsa believes in magic again. 

And for the first time in forever, she feels the smirk pulling at her lips. The sly smile is like an old coat she hasn't worn in years. 

"Are you ready?" 

The kids shriek louder with glee as she sends them flying gently into a soft snowbank. And the others race up for their turn to fly, something settles in her soul. Elsa looks up to see Anna watching, tears in her eyes and the widest smile she's ever seen on her face. 

Winter doesn't last forever either.


	10. i saw your face before the rough, you should wait around awhile 'cause your body's bound to turn up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> by ultranos
> 
> Title from: "Running for Home" - Matthew Good Band

She doesn't know where she is. 

Step. 

The mountains are cooler than the desert. More forgiving. But she carries the desert with her, on her boots, on her clothes, in her hair, and in her mind. She wandered through the sun-blasted and barren land, and still does not know more than she did before it. She's been running since DC, since the carriers fell out of the sky and took her world with them, drowning them all in the river with blood and broken steel. 

Step. 

In DC, she saw a ghost. A dead hero and a memorial. There's no place for her, in the empty space that woman left behind. Not that it matters anyway, because she's too jagged, too sharp, too _broken_ to fit in there anyway. (Anomaly. Errors. The programming didn't take. _Mission failure._ ) So she went away, spirits of the damned dogging her steps. Same as it ever was. 

She's 50 miles from Lake Tahoe, and she doesn't know where she is. 

Step. 

She's not thinking about the one who knew her. 

_I'm right here. I'm with you 'til the end of the line._

There's no train coming. There never was. Is. Was? 

_(She'll come. She'll come. She'll come she'll come she'llcomeshe'llcomeshe'llcome.) (The door stays closed.)_

Step. 

She's been running for a long time. Days and nights have bled into each other, time becoming a smear across the sky. It's longer than she's been aware of for a very long time, she knows that much. Maybe it'll be longer still. (Forever isn't part of her vocabulary. Nothing lasts forever. Only death.) 

All she knows right now is the road, not even where she's going towards. Just away. She couldn't stay. She never stays. 

Step. 

The early morning sun glints into her eyes, off the metal roof of a diner. It looks like any of the dozens she's passed before. The parking lot already has cars in it. She should just keep walking. 

Her stomach growls. She's forgotten she needs to eat again. (Sustenance was provided to keep the tool maintained.) She has no money. But her tongue feels thick in her mouth, and her canteen has long since gone dry. Maybe she can at least get water. 

The bell jangles overhead when she opens the door. She tries not to jump at it (trained to move, not move, no sound, at sound, what is it now?). The woman at the front stares at her. 

More than her are staring. She feels the eyes from all over the diner on her. Someone drops a fork. She tries again not to react (not threats not a threat, stand down). Her eyes take in the sightlines, assess the choke points, the places for cover. They're still staring. Her fist clenches. She's too thirsty to run, she needs to fix that. Even if she's boxed in, out in the open. 

She focuses back on the woman. The woman has been talking. She blinks and opens her mouth. Her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth. It's uncomfortable. She fails. Inconvenient. 

"Honey. Can I help you?" The woman's voice dropped, edges falling off, gaze softening. 

She tries again, lips cracking. "Water." 

The woman assesses her. "Of course." Her stomach growls again. She frowns. The woman's lips turn down. "Are you sure that's it?" 

"Water," she says again, words like sandpaper on her throat. "Can't pay." That is how these things go. 

"Honey..." 

Someone clears his throat. There's a young man (part Japanese?) standing 10 feet away. "Hi?" The woman splits her attention. "She can come by us. We'll pay." 

The woman's eyes widen. "Sir, you don't have to do that." 

The man's lips turn up. "It's fine. Really. My grandfather _insisted_." 

The woman looks back at her, where she's been standing still this entire time, not moving an inch. "If that's all right?" 

The young man smiles at her. "Ma'am? It's fine, really. Follow me, please?" 

She blinks. It's not an order. But he's not a threat. So she shuffles after him, a dark and dusty shadow, past the other staring eyes until they reach a table. There's an old man, also Japanese, sitting there already, plates of food only partially eaten. He stares at her intently, assessing. She straightens up. It doesn't feel right, but almost. 

The old man says something in Japanese. The young man scrambles a bit, then offers her a chair. Her back would be to the wall, sight lines clear. She sits. 

Another young woman comes by the table, laminated piece of paper and a glass of water in her hands. Both are placed in front of her. She drinks the water down. The coolness slides down her throat, and it feels so familiar, the feeling of ice in her mouth, along her fingertips. It's been a long winter. Always winter. 

She looks at the laminated paper, the menu. There are so many choices, options, paths. It's not regimented. It means nothing, just noise. It might as well be in Greek for all she understands it. 

"You have no idea, do you?" 

She looks up. The old man is still staring at her, something unreadable in his eyes. He looks...tired. Or...sad? 

Something flits across the back of her mind, too fast for her to catch it. It chips away at the walls, a tap against the glacier. There's something here, something that's setting her nerves on end. She shakes her head. 

The old man mutters under his breath. "I'm getting too old for this shit." 

"Grandfather," the young man hisses. 

Another piece chips away. 

She's walking on a tightrope over a wilderness of razorblades. There's _something here_ , something she's _missing_ , something she doesn't know but should. And one wrong step will flay her open, drown her again in ice and blood and darkness. Or maybe it won't. Maybe she has to jump. 

She remembers falling. 

The menu still doesn't make any sense. 

The young woman comes back to refill the glass. "Do you know what you want?" She stares at the woman blankly. What...she wants? She doesn't remember the last time someone asked her that. No one ever asked her that. (Liar.) A tool doesn't want things. But she's not a tool anymore. Is she? There's no one holding her, aiming her, not anymore. She's not allowed to want things. She's not supposed to want things. She looks down. She doesn't know how to choose. 

The menu disappears from her sight, taken by the woman. She never answered, but she feels relief anyway. It's better this way. She can't do anything for the two men across from her anyway. Not unless they want something killed. (What do they _want_ anyway?) None of this makes sense. Why are they doing this? 

"This is the goddamn saddest thing I've ever seen." 

She looks up. The old man is staring at her intently. She tilts her head slightly, feeling the chipping away. There's a door, somewhere, but she's too far away, it's too far away, she's always too far away. Always too far to answer the knocking. 

But she can hear it now. 

There's something about this man, lines creasing his face, the weight of years ever-present. She's seen old men before. Old men would come, tell her what to do, would order, command, place the muzzle on. This old man is different. She can't tell what it is. He's looking at her like he wants something. It's nothing she can give him. 

He's not like the others. 

"Grandfather, what...you're making her uncomfortable." 

She glances over at the young man. That one is also staring at the old man. She dismisses him and looks back at the old man. He's the one who's setting off her nerves, whose eyes see too much, who _wants_ something from her. 

"It's fine. Just let it happen." 

"Grandfather..." 

"Ryan. It'll be fine." The old man presses his lips together. "Someone's just a little lost." 

She looks down at the table, seeing patterns in the ghosts of coffee cups and battered silverware. Lost. Yes. That's the word. That's the word for when you don't know where you are. When you don't know who you are. Lost is when you don't know where you belong. She doesn't belong anywhere. Not since DC. Maybe before that. She's been wandering through the desert without a compass. Maybe she never really had one. 

A plate appears in front of her. She blinks and looks up again. The young woman gives her a small smile before putting down a mug and walking away. Oh. Coffee. The plate contains pancakes and scrambled eggs. 

She reaches for a fork, spreads the butter around, and scoops the scrambled eggs down the middle of the pancake. She starts to roll it up. Pauses. The hairs on the back of her neck are raised. She looks up. 

The old man is grinning at her. 

She looks down at her breakfast. This...this is familiar. She's always done this. She's never had pancakes and eggs, but she's always eaten them like this. They used to find it hilarious. So what? Easier to eat on the go, when they've got 100 miles to cross before lunch time, when she's holed up in a tree, aiming down a scope. 

_"I swear to god, you're the only person in the world who eats like that."_

Wait, what? 

She knows this man. Beneath the years and distance, beneath the weight of age and blood and dust, she knows him. And he knows her, because there are some things you can never forget. 

The glacier cleaves, and suddenly, she _knows_. 

Elsa squints. "Jim?" 

Jim Morita laughs, loud and long. "Barnes, you goddamn glorious, stubborn bastard." 

"Christ, Jim. You got _old_." 

"And _you're_ still a smartass," he cracks. Jim shakes his head. "Welcome back, Barnes." 

The skin around her cheeks tightens. It feels so unfamiliar, but...nice. Lighter. She's...smiling. "Thanks." Elsa looks down, at her plate of food. "I did this all the time, didn't I? You ordered this on purpose." She finishes rolling up the pancake and starts eating. Oh god, she's so _hungry_ , it takes all her willpower not to shove the entire thing into her face. 

"Of course I did. You missed a lot. I had kids, I had to get sneaky." 

Elsa swallows. "I can see that." God, Jim's grandson is older than _she_ is. Wait, how old _is_ she? "That is so weird. Who the hell agreed to marry you?" 

"Grandmother asks herself that question a lot," the younger man (Ryan?) says, grinning. 

"Smart woman. I suppose everyone's allowed a lapse in judgment." 

"Didn't anyone ever teach you to respect your elders, Barnes?" Jim crosses his arms. "See if I ever buy you pancakes again." 

Elsa takes another bite as she waves her hand at him. She freezes, swallows hard, and lowers the pancake-roll. Her other arm is still outstretched, light from the diner glinting off the metal. She thinks about making a fist. The metal arm clenches. Opens the fist. Waves her fingers around. 

The metal arm obeys her every thought. 

Oh. That part _wasn't_ a nightmare. The Soldier _howls_. 

"I lost my arm when I fell, didn't I?" she asks quietly. 

Jim sighs, and nods. "I think you did. I didn't see it happen. No one did, except the Captain." He looks down at his own meal. "She wasn't the same afterward." 

Elsa's breath gets caught in her throat. A redheaded woman leaning out of a train, getting smaller and smaller as she falls away, Elsa's name torn from her lips and carried on roaring wind. 

A redheaded, gangly teen, wiping blood from her lip and grinning madly. 

A girl shaking her awake, asking for snowmen. 

Elsa closes her eyes, and _remembers_. 

"Elsa." She opens her eyes again. Jim's got an indecipherable expression on his face (god, she can't understand these _people_ anymore). "Why are you here?" 

"I..." She trails off. 

"Go _home_ , Elsa." 

Elsa bites her lip. "I don't even know where that is anymore." 

Jim shakes his head slowly. "Yeah, you do. It's the same as it's always been." 

"I..." She breathes in. The howling in her mind quiets for a moment. The door is closer than ever. All she needs to do is take a step. 

Because he's right. Home only ever was one place for her. And she won't find herself until she goes there. 

"I...I need to go." 

Jim smiles like he's won something. "Then go." 

She gets up, takes a few steps, then turns back and grabs the rest of her breakfast. Jim's laughter makes it worth it as she exits the diner. 

Elsa promised she'd be there until the end of the line. She has a train to catch. 

\---- 

On the other side of the country, it's raining weeks later. The water is dripping into her eyes as she looks up at the multi-story building. The rain cuts trails over the dust and grime she's covered in, but she's not thinking about that. The howling in her mind is quiet right now. It's letting her be, if only for a little while longer. 

All she has to do is get through the door. 

As it turns out, it's trivial to ghost on in after a tenant leaves. The security guard doesn't even notice her. The Soldier's done this, the Soldier knows how to do this. 

Step. 

Her steps are light, not making a sound, as she goes up the flights of stairs, even though each step feels heavier than the last. She can't stop now. Not when she's so close. She's got her objective. 

No, not objective. She chips away at the glacier, and it recedes a bit. 

Step. 

She just needs to hang on a little more. She can't fall again. The wind howls again in her mind. 

Step. 

Her fist lands on the heavy wood of the door. Four knocks. 

Her stomach twists. 

The door opens. 

A redheaded woman is standing there, in a t-shirt and shorts. Her eyes go wide and her hand goes to her mouth. 

Elsa breathes out. 

"Anna."


	11. a dream you hold in your hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- redonthefly

In the beginning, Elsa doesn’t talk much, but she reads  _everything_.

Anna can remember late nights of their childhood, when Elsa would sit wrapped in blankets against the cold, one bare hand sticking out of her cocoon and holding a book, squinting in the semi-darkness and protesting, always, when told to go to bed.

If she was voracious then, she is insatiable now: pages fall like cities beneath her fingertips.

One afternoon Kristoff appears on their doorstep with a little box and a smile, and spends the whole rest of the day showing Elsa how to plug the Kindle into Anna’s SHIELD issue laptop and fill it up with books from the library, from Amazon, from Project Gutenberg.

"This was nice of you," Anna says quietly. They’re standing next to each other leaning over the little half counter that separates her small apartment kitchen from the living area, hands wrapped around too-hot mugs of reheated coffee, watching Elsa hunch with single-minded focus over the glowing blue screen, punching letters enthusiastically into the keyboard.

"I mean, we tried the library, but it’s a bit of a walk still."  _And it’s crowded and it scares her_ , she doesn’t say. But Kristoff nods like he knows, and she smiles, because he usually does. “And the hand doesn’t do so well with paper,” she adds as an afterthought, wincing at the memory of shredded paper and Elsa’s howls.

"Buttons are good," Kristoff agrees in an undertone, and bumps his shoulder into hers. "What does she like to read, anyway?"

Anna considers. Then answers “Everything.”

*

In retrospect, Anna thinks it might not have been the smartest idea to suggest the great Russian novelists right off the bat, but she was aiming for familiar, and Elsa still spends half of her time muttering to herself in Russian, and writing the grocery lists in some bizarre jumble of English and Cyrillic.

That said,  _Crime and Punishment_  was a really, really bad idea.

“You are a  _fucking idiot,_ Rogers,” Natasha hisses from over Elsa’s shoulder. She’s been murmuring soothing words and rubbing her back for the last half hour, after finally coaxing Elsa out of the locked bathroom. “You could have at least given her some Pushkin, I swear to god.” Anna sort of shrugs, helpless, and goes to make a pot of coffee.

 _The Grapes of Wrath_  doesn’t go over well either.

“IT WAS ON THE LIST!” Elsa screeches, the Kindle abandoned on the floor. “WHY WAS IT ON THE LIST?”

Anna rescues the Kindle, sits Elsa down on the couch, and opens up the laptop to find that her sister has been working her way through a Goodreads list of ‘Best 20th Century Fiction’. She scrolls down the page a bit, past  _1984_  and  _The Great Gatsby_ ,  _Lolita,_  and  _A Clockwork Orange_.

“I have an idea,” she announces, closing out of the page. “Let’s see what Kristoff recommends; he knows more of the new stuff.”

*

Kristoff recommends Harry Potter and, somewhat incongruously,  _Nancy Drew._

“There’s a lot of…really sad fiction these days,” he says, when Anna quirks a face at him and mouths ‘new?’. “I just can’t see Elsa having a good time reading  _The Hunger Games_.”

Anna’s read them; she agrees. Instead of commenting, she picks up the book on the top of the stack Kristoff brought with him.

“We had these, I think, when we were little,” Anna says, fingers tracing the blue letters on the pale yellow spine. “I can’t believe they still make them.”  He’d brought a stack of them over, a small tower of hardback covers screen-printed with Nancy’s face, weathered and worn where they’d been palmed over and over by eager readers. Kristoff said he’d found them in a $1 bin next to a bodega in his neighborhood; Anna picks at the green price sticker with her fingernail, and watches Elsa hesitantly thumb through a copy of  _The Spider Sapphire Mystery_.

“Some things stick around, if they’re good enough,” Kristoff grins. “It’s not all ‘sands through the hourglass’, you know.”

“What?”

*

When fantasy and science fiction, the Star Wars novelizations, and a considerable chunk of Neil Gaiman’s and Ursula Le Guin’s canon has fallen under Elsa’s appetite for fiction, she moves on to science and technology.

Elsa has always been interested in space and astronomy, and so scrambles for anything and everything she can find on the subject; it’s almost entirely after their time, and Anna finds herself swept along in her enthusiasm, googling images from the Hubble telescope and watching Netflix documentaries on the planets at night.

One night she comes home later than usual to the little door to their miniature porch propped open with a kitchen chair, the night air cooling the living room and ruffling the pages of a magazine on the coffee table.

“Elsa?”

“I’m out here,” a voice calls. Elsa has mastered the ability to shout softly, which Anna always finds strange – her voice will carry, but like a whisper that only she can hear.

‘Out here’ is apparently on the roof. Anna joins her after a moment spent puzzling how she’d managed to hoist herself up that high on her own before remembering  _yeah, metal arm, super strength_ , and swings herself up too.

Elsa is wrapped in a quilt, and she lifts up one side so Anna can snuggle in next to her under the blanket, buffered from the chill in the October evening.

“I can’t believe,” she starts, then pauses to clear her throat. “I can’t believe there’s so much out there, sometimes.”

Anna’s not sure if she means space or space monsters – she remembers the gaping hole in the sky, the screams of the Chitauri soldiers, the flash of a red and gold suit against inky black and the blinking silver stars. When she doesn’t reply, Elsa grunts and waves one hand out from the blanket, looking for a moment so familiar that it hurts.

“They built everything to discover it, and then they covered it up with…with smoke, and streetlamps.”

When they were very small, the Milky Way was clear and bright in the southern sky, brilliant and twined with the greens and purples of the aurora. If she’d known about gods and monsters then, she might have imagined one blowing glitter from their palm, sprinkling the heavens with starlight. Tonight Anna strains, but it’s no use – even if she knew where to look, she couldn’t see it, and the thought brings a lump unexpectedly into her throat.

“Hey,” Elsa says roughly, nudging her under the quilt. “You can still see the Big Dipper, look.”

*

It’s inevitable that Elsa would move eventually to the collection of modern history that Anna has collected. Anna hasn’t read many of them in months or years even; when she notices the bare spot on her bookshelf, her first thought is that she really should dust more often. And then,  _oh no_.

Anna doesn’t see her for a week, and would wonder if Elsa was even in the apartment at all (she has demonstrated proficiency in slipping out of windows that would rival Natasha) if it weren’t for the muffled keening she can almost hear through their shared wall.

There isn’t anything she can do for that kind of hurt, so when she blinks awake at 2AM for no reason than the faintest movement in the next bedroom, she presses one palm against the beige textured wall, the other fisted in her bedspread, and prays.

She hasn’t prayed in years, and hardly knows what it feels like any more, but her cheeks are wet and her heart is sore and it feels like the right thing to do.

*

Elsa discovers the Sunday Comics,  _Calvin and Hobbes_ , and water balloons, all in that order.

“This is fantastic,” she says, watching with rapt attention as a red and green missile explodes on the street beneath their balcony.

Anna smiles, and drops her own balloon; it shatters, fragments of ice and blue plastic spreading with a surprisingly loud  _crack_  against the asphalt.

Elsa grins at her, and wiggles her fingers.

*

Sometime in the spring, Anna is sitting cross-legged on the couch, half watching Kristoff channel flip past the dozens of sports networks and soap operas. On the other side of the room, Elsa is lounging in her favorite chair – it had been Anna’s favorite chair once, but Elsa had gravitated toward it immediately – she spent so many days ensconced there with a stack of books and a blanket that Anna now has a hard time looking at it without seeing the shadow of her sister there, one metal finger curling around a lock of blonde hair, chewing on her lip, eyes flashing as she reads.

She can even smell the traces of Elsa’s cucumber scented shampoo in the upholstery.

She’s there now, left hand gently cradling the beaten red leather case of her Kindle, thumb quietly advancing the pages, and right hand dangling an apple over the armrest, forgotten after one bite.

“There isn’t anything good on,” Kristoff announces, clicking off the TV with the remote and tossing it half-heartedly onto the rug. “500 channels and nothing to watch.”

Elsa looks up, expression clear and calm, and says quietly, “You could always read a book.”


	12. Belay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the collective birthdays of ultranos/counterpunches! Thanks to dimir-charmer and ultranos for edits!

                Anna could do it. Just a twist of the wrist.

                Elsa’s – the Soldier’s – metal fingers clamped down and dug into the muscles of her arm, their cold touch sinking beneath her skin. If that was the game she wanted to play, fine. Anna could play too, only it wasn’t the Soldier’s arm she held. She squeezed the Soldier’s throat harder, hoisted her higher off the ground. The Soldier shook and writhed, eyes of dead ice bulging, but she couldn’t get down, couldn’t break Anna’s grip. Just a twist of the wrist. _Snap._ That’s all it would take. She could do it. Any moment.

                But…couldn’t the Soldier too?

                If she really wanted Anna dead, the Soldier could kill her. In the a blink of an eye the Soldier could crystallize her blood, chill the air in her lungs until it liquefied, freeze her heart…

                Couldn’t she?   

                What if she _couldn’t_?

                The cold that radiated from that arm was numbing, lethal, but not once had Anna seen the Soldier do the magic. Frost swirled about her, but it wasn’t _hers_. It didn’t obey her. Wouldn’t even touch her.

                When had Elsa used the magic? _Think, Anna!_ Memories burst into her mind. After waiting sixty years, they were more than ready. Memories of Elsa, and magic. A volley of snowballs to chase some bullies off. A snowbank for Anna to fall in. A snowman that walked and talked. And then the war. Banks of fog to hide in, slick patches to trip enemies, walls of ice for cover. And at night a chill in the air: the wounds you couldn’t see breathed out in clouds of sparkling frost.

                The magic was Elsa’s.

                The magic was _Elsa_.

                Elsa was here.

                Anna’s arm was made of flesh and blood. It couldn’t hold Elsa up like this for long. Her fingers opened, and the Soldier – Elsa – _Elsa_ – slumped to the ground. Her pistol clattered to the thick glass floor beside her

                Anna glanced up. It was a good thirty-foot climb back up to the platform in the center of the room, but the pipes that covered it made easy enough handholds. Anna didn’t have to climb that; she could _skip_ up. She turned toward it, then stopped. Elsa was down for the moment, but it wouldn’t last. Even without the magic, she could use the gun just fine. Anna picked it up and flung it out the hole Kristoff had blown in the side of the ship. She had no idea how he’d put it there. Something about a rocket? She’d been busy. She’d have to ask him later, maybe over coffee. Yes, coffee. That sounded nice.

                Right! Climbing.

                Anna ran for the pillar, crouched, and leapt ten feet into the air toward its side. She didn’t just grab it when she hit; she latched onto a protruding pipe and swung herself even higher. She grabbed on, looked up, took a breath. She was a good fifteen feet up. Not bad. Fifteen more to go. Hand over hand she climbed, hands steady, feet solid. This was nothing compared to the Alps. Anna was a decent climber, but Elsa had been some sort of freakish cross between a monkey and a mountain goat. One mission just before dawn, Anna had been clinging to the west side of a rock half a mile above some village in Bavaria, head aching from the cold. She’d crested an overhang and there was Elsa, reclining on a crag two hundred feet up like it was a lawnchair, braided silver hair dyed red in the fiery sunlight. She held that huge rifle of hers in one hand and a spool of rope in the other, and showed no intention of using either one.

                _Really?_ Anna mimed? No words in these canyons. They’d echo.

                Elsa grinned. _Climb on up._

And Anna _had_. She’d climbed all two hundred feet of it, mostly just to paste a snowball on Elsa’s smirking face. With Elsa as a big sister, getting pelted with snowballs was a fact of everyday life, and getting the chance to return the favor had been…

                Wait. What was that whirring-

                In a flash, her left leg burned with a cold fire that consumed her from the outside in, and she screamed. As quick as the pain had come, it vanished, along with every other sensation in her leg.

                Then she slipped.

                Both arms snapped up and wrapped around the pipe above her head, and she swung about, legs scrambling for purchase. No. Not _legs_. Only one leg. Her left leg was numb, dead.

                She glanced down. Elsa stood with two fingers metal pointing at Anna like a smoking gun, white vapor trailing from the tips. Shaggy silver hair cascaded over her eyes, dead no longer. Not alive, cold and hard and lost, so lost, but _present_. The icy blue light of Elsa’s magic seeped through its seams, straining at every fissure to break free.

                It…was _Elsa’s_ magic, wasn’t it? Then why could the arm use it? Why could…

                _Stop dallying, Anna!_ There was kind of a world to save. _Keep. Climbing._

                Ten feet left. Ten feet to the top of that cliff, up into the red sunlight _._ She hoisted herself up, hand over hand, but her stupid leg was worse than useless. It wouldn’t stop _flopping_ , catching on pipes, pulling her down. She growled in frustration. Five feet left. She could jump that. Grunting, she tensed her arms and working leg, and-

                _Whirrrrrr._

                Icy daggers plunged into her right elbow, and cold fire gnawed its way up the inside of her arm to the tips of her fingers. She lost her momentum just before her jump, but it was too late to stop. Her awkward leap took her chest up to the edge of the glass platform, but also pushed her _away_ from it, out over open space. Hanging in midair, she flailed desperately for the edge of the platform above her and slammed both arms down on the top.

                That’s when she realized she could still feel her right hand. She realized that because when she slapped her palm down on the glass surface of the platform, it _hurt_. The magic must have just grazed her. Gritting her teeth, she hoisted herself up her elbows, then swung her right leg up and rolledherself over the top, left leg dragging behind.

                Ten feet away was the center console. Anna palmed the belt pouch that held Fury’s chip. It was still there. Sunlight seeped from behind it and glinted off the glass floor, stained dark red by the smoke outside. A sunrise, upside down. Anna crawled toward the console on hands and elbows and her one good knee.  Six feet. Five feet. Four feet. Her right hand ached with every inch. _Faster!_

                Three. Two. One.

                She scrambled to hoist herself up, leaned her side against the console, then _pushed_ with her good leg and slid upward. Yes. There was the bank of chips, with one empty slot where Fury’s chip needed to go. She clamped her stiff, frozen right hand around the console’s support bar to stabilize herself. With her other hand she drew the chip from her pouch. If Fury wasn’t playing her, this thing would send the Hellicarriers down in flames.

                With Elsa still aboard.

                Anna’s hand shook. Not the frozen onethis time, but oneholding the chip.

                Elsa had fallen before. At least Anna could fall with her this time.

                Anna moved the chip toward the slot.

                _Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrr._

                Everything went white.

               

                -

 

                “Anna.”

                Anna was already awake, just like every morning. Shivering under the covers, gasping for breath with her eyes closed counted.

                “Anna.” Stepping into the room, Elsa stifled a yawn. “Anna. Time to get up.”

                “Well _you_ just see how easy it is with-” She coughed and coughed and coughed. Elsa rushed over to her side and wrapped an arm around her.

                “ _Anna!_ ”

                Anna sunk into her sister’s arms and smiled. Her touch wasn’t even cold anymore. Anna’s lungs burned, but the cough subsided.

                “ _ANNA! GET UP!_ ”

 

                -

 

                Anna’s lungs burned. She gasped for air, but it wouldn’t come. She couldn’t breathe. No. Not this again, not back to this, please-

                Her heart pounded. _Thump, thump._

                Spears of ice as cold as death shot from her heart through her arms and legs and head. She would have screamed if she could breathe.

                _Thump, thump._

                Her face was pressed to the glass floor. Ice filled her veins. Cold. Her head pounded. Spots filled her vision, little blotches of nothing that grew and grew. Like little clouds of sleep. So cold. Sleep. Sleep sounded nice.

                _Thump, thump._ “ _…up._ ”

                Not knowing why, Anna lifted her shaking left hand. Somehow, it still held the chip. Patterns of frost warred across her skin, sharp lines in right angles striking against swirling vines and snowflakes.

                _Thump_. _“GET!” Thump_. _“UP!_ ”

                That voice. It was Elsa. Of _course_.

                The magic was Elsa’s. The magic was Elsa. Elsa was here.

                Elsa was _here_.

                With Anna.

                Now.

                Cold exploded from her heart and filled her chest and arms and legs and head until they were ready to burst, but it wasn’t a _dead_ cold. It was hard as ice and strong as a blizzard and alive, free, and there was a fierce joy to it that brought Anna up from the floor to her hands and knees.

                Reflected in the glass below she saw a stranger. No…not a stranger. Light teal eyes. Braided silver hair dyed red in the fiery sunlight.

                Not quite Anna, not quite Elsa.

                Neither.

                Both.

                In her left hand was the chip. She somehow still held it, even after passing out. She grasped at the console with her frozen hand and rose. With every heartbeat, her body threatened to collapse, and with every heartbeat a cold strength gripped her and kept her moving upward, like a rope to bear her up.

                She stretched her left arm out. Her skin was a frozen battleground. Numbing lines of angular frost shot up her shoulder toward her hand while swirling vines and snowflakes grew wild, layers and layers wrapping and entwining into a barrier that gripped her wrist like a glove too tight. A wall of ice for cover.

                She planted the chip in the slot. A green light glowed on the console.

                _Thump, thump_. Numbness spread from Anna’s heart. That cold magic couldn’t hold Anna up like this for long.

                Anna slumped to the ground. This time, it was her turn to fall.


End file.
